An embodiment of the invention relates to the field of messaging through circuit and packet data networks. Specifically, systems, methods and processes for identification, authentication, routing, delivery of electronic messages across one or more communication networks and transmission methods, are described here. These messages may be, but are not limited to, facsimile, voice messages, images, electronic documents, and software elements.
A provider of unified messaging services may have the following capabilities for servicing the messaging needs of its customers. First, each customer is assigned a unique telephone number. The customer can give this number to others; the others can then leave messages for the customer at that number (e.g., voice and facsimile messages). The way these messages are processed and stored may be as follows. A network of servers, which can be owned and/or managed by the service provider, is configured to capture an inbound message that has been transmitted to the customer's phone number over the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Once captured, typically in digital form, the message is then sent, as an attachment to an email message, to the customer's email address. This is the address of an email box that typically will have been previously established by the customer; the customer would have reported his email address to the service provider. The customer can now retrieve the messages, by accessing her email box, detaching and then viewing or playing back the attached messaged. This technique for unified messaging has a number of advantages for the customer, including a single interface for retrieving different types of messages, and a relatively inexpensive storage area for her messages.
The provider's server network can span different cities, states, and countries, so customers may be assigned telephone numbers over a wide geographical range. Thus, a customer living in New York City may request a telephone number that has a New York City area code. A server in that area code can then be configured to recognize incoming calls to that customer's telephone number, capture the inbound message and then address the message (via an email attachment, for example) to the customer's data network address. A central database managed by the service provider and accessible by all of the servers (in the service provider's network), can be used to associate each customer's phone number with his data network address and his message forwarding instructions (such as the file format of the email attachment). The server uses the database to determine where to route the message for a particular customer, i.e. which node of the provider's network can most cost efficiently forward the message, or which node has the needed resource to translate the message into a certain format required by the customer's machine.